I was nicely surprised by this film, my initial expectations were fairly low. This is a case when a plot outline conveys nothing, it's a simple story of an old woman who meets her first love, and their story goes back and forth between 1941-2 and late 90s Russia. The husband complements the triangle, and so the story goes to its sad and reflective end, and I am not about to retell the scenario here. What's really good here and works so well is that the subject is treated gently, in half-tones, if you will, and definitely not overdone, but still the whole scene is well defined. The social backdrop is portrayed gently, it's not noisy and showing the routine of the main heroine's life serves its purpose. The scenes from the war time appeared to me a bit more stylized, but are passable. The actors are doing a very good job to be believable, the story itself is uncharacteristically believable, thus, depending on personal life experiences, it may touch the viewers on many levels and leave them pondering about something far away from ever-present pragmatism, like love and time and memory. My main gripe is that the exit from the situation is death. This seems a bit too easy. Okay, it's a plausible, but a cheap way out. Would the husband accept the wife's betrayal if she was alive or jealousy and bitterness would have prevailed? And can you call this a betrayal? I don't know, if a non-Russian would catch all the nuances behind the characters. If any "westerner" saw it, please share your opinion! On the other hand, I am not so sure that DVD with subtitles exist, Russians continue to do a very pathetic job in this department.
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